Video for a wet Tuesday

Butt Head I`m sure this kid gets picked on at school every day.

News Break 5.23.08

Fitting picture.

This is how I seem to feel most of the time as of late. I really don't want to spend the whole post here talking about my parent's divorce so I'll only hit the high points.

Divorce sucks. The reasons don't matter. Period.

Divorce starts to bring out all kinds of "truths" that have been hidden over the years. You find out that people either may or may not be who you knew or suspected.

My mom is having a very hard time with everything and I can understand from a distance. After almost 32 years of marriage it would be hard to find out that your husband had been having an affair for the last year. It would then be hard to set your sights on trying to pick the pieces back up to see what can be salvaged only to find out a year later, before your 33rd anniversary, that the last year had been for nought.

My dad, as we have come to find out, began casual email correspondence with an old co-worker. After two or three years it escalated to something more. It essentially turned into a second life. Now as more and more comes back to the surface the plot only thickens and becomes more complicated.

I plan on meeting with my dad this weekend to discuss some of the insanity in which he now lives. I'm glad that we are finally meeting because I was beginning to fear that he was avoiding me and that our relationship might altogether dissolve. He is, after all, still my father.

My mother has rightfully told him that as soon as the house is refinanced in her name and she has ownership that she wants him out. I kind of hate to see that happen but it is what she needs to be able to move on with her life.

I find myself loving on my kids more these days.

One thing is for certain in life- nothing in life is for certain; circulum ad nausium.

In other news, I was recently able to finish tiling my bathtub surround. I only have a few pieces of crown moulding that need to be replaced. For the most part though, it feels pretty good to have a project complete. I haven't seemed to be able to do that for a while.

I am typing this post through the Safari web browser.

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend. My motto: Oppose war at all possible costs, but support our troops when it does happen.

That will be all for now.

I Upgraded - OR - Do You Ubuntu?

It is here, and probably has been for a while before I upgraded.

So efficient.

Let's Ketchup

I've been a little absent from the blog-o-sphere lately. I've just had a lot going on all at once and I've been hard pressed to have the strength to remember things that were on my mind earlier in the day when it is so late at night. I end up making mental notes in my head but then I forget where I put them.

Spring is here and I'm finally so glad to see days of sunshine and warmer temperatures that don't make me wonder who much I'm going to have to shovel the next day. I can leave my jacket in the car and the furnace doesn't have to run as much. Sleeping comes more comfortably for me...so now I just need to try and bring myself to start going to bed at decent times. The other thing that I love is that I can spend more time with my kids outside. I remember spending so much time outside as a kid. My world existed outside. The indoors seemed only to serve a few very small purposes for me-
It's where I could sleep
It's where my food came from
It's where I found shelter in the cold and rain
It's where we came to memorize the entire script of The Goonies

Now that I'm older the inside does server far more useful purposes than those listed above but too much of it is just too much. I like being outside. It helps my depression. I'd like to think that it helps my tan, but after frying myself a few years ago while fishing, this raging paradoxidation will not be too concerned about the shade of his skin. Vanity.

I came home from work on Thursday to a quiet house. My wife's van was in the driveway and I entered the house to find her busy doing wife things and the rest was all quiet. I thought that the kids may have been either outside playing quietly and I missed them, they were over at the neighbor's or they were upstairs playing so I inquired. "Where are the kids?" My wife replied "they're not here." She had left them with her parents up at the farm. It will be a good break for both us and the kids. We needed some time together with just the two of us and some quiet time to be able to do some "adult" stuff and the kids really love spending time with "Memah and Papa." Everybody wins.

So we started Friday night off with a bang in a series of adult excursions- going to a home store to begin looking at tile for our bathtub surround. That's right. How much more adult can you get than that? The only problem was that we had limited time. We had a quick look at what the offerings were in Ames before we tried to sneak in a quick "date" at Fazoli's before I had to get back home to do some work for my "regular" job. Did we get everything done that we wanted to? No, but that's OK because we still got some alone time together. It had been almost a year since she and I had ridden alone in my car.

Saturday [yesterday] was nothing short of a roller-coaster.

You may remember the cat that I blogged about in my last post. The executive decision was made painfully that she needed to find another home. We don't know quite what happened but on Friday when we were out she decided that our futon mattress and a toy box belonging to the kids were going to be her litter boxes. We can't have that. So yesterday's excursion started out by making a trip to Des Moines to look at new futon mattresses. Yep, she really unloaded on the old one.

Once the new mattress was purchased then it was off to the Animal Rescue League. I really hated to leave her there but we just could not keep her if we could not trust her to wee where she's supposed to. The thing that made me feel much better about it though is knowing that the league takes very good caution as to who they release the animals to. I am sure that she'll end up in a good home and make someone very happy...but I will miss her affectionate cuddling.

After dropping her off then we were off to lunch. The menu started out to be a trip to one of the places that we like to visit periodically where my wife can have a steaming hot plate of Carne Asada and I can get my fill of beef nachos. Two things happened, though, on the way that sidetracked us. The first was my sister calling me on my cell leaving me a message that said that we really needed to talk soon. So when I could I called her back and we agreed that we'd find a time later that day to get together and discuss what was on her mind. The second sidetracking was the notice that the mall that we were driving past now had an Old Chicago restaurant. That has become a new fav of my wife and I so we stopped there to have a makeup date for the one that we missed Friday night.

After eating we then ventured off to look at more shower tile. What a dangerous feat. You stand there in an aisle looking like a major idiot [well, at least we probably looked that way since it was our first time] trying to decide what we wanted. We had started this journey with grand ideas of having the most awesome shower that we could imagine, within out budget.....but by the time it was all said and done we had both agreed that perhaps just plain 'ole white would do the trick. So now it was just a matter of finding the best price.

On our way to the next place of interest to shop for tile prices the phone rang again and it was my sister. She had decided on a time to get together with me and it was in 10 minutes. The van then took a detour that became a 10 minute drive to what felt like was going to be a funeral of some kind. I was now on my way to have an intervention of sorts with my dad. No drug or alcohol problems involved that we knew of but still something that needed to be addressed. To make a very long story short he finally told us that he had filed for divorce.

We had seen this coming from miles away. Mom and dad have had issues for quite a few years now that had only gotten worse in the last few years and then even worse in the last year. So much secrecy and avoidance of the issue. They really thought that they were playing house to the public well enough for nobody to notice but we knew.

It's nobody else's business at this point why they are doing this but for the first time in a very long time I sat there on the couch feeling a mental schetzophrenia. On the one half of my brain I had so many thoughts and questions going through my mind and on the other half I only heard what can be described as that sad music that you might hear during the credits of a movie that closes the door on any doubts you may have had about the story.

I had a lot of friends with divorced parents when I was a kid but I never knew from any of them just what that meant for them to go through. Now I am almost 30 years old and out on my own so I imagine that I might be in somewhat of an easier place with this. It doesn't seem to have quite the same emotional impact on me that it would have otherwise had if I had to think about having clothes in two different bedrooms in two different houses...and yet still I cry.

Almost thirty-three years of marriage will soon be gone. My mom is understandably crushed as she was led to believe that last year there may have been, if even only dim at that time, some glimmer of hope for them. My dad seems calloused and resolved about it.

So now while I remain on the fence as to what my next steps are in this whole process is with them I have to somehow prepare myself for the day that will soon be approaching when I have to explain to my children why Grandpa is never at Grandma's anymore and why he lives somewhere else.

I don't know what else to say about it right now. The thing that sucks and yet still offers me hope is that I remain one of the few left in my family that has only been married once to one woman. Despite our difference, God knows I'll fight to keep this one.

I gott a go now. My nose needs to be blown and I need to get to work on my shower, or as I like to call it- therapy.

Selah